Category: Blog
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Singularity”
“You’re lucky you’re a decent engineer because you obviously don’t know anything about writing.’” The galaxy is a death-trap, filled with pockets of space, nebula, and gas giants that drive ordinary, well-mannered humans nuts. This being a large galaxy, there’s a whole variety of mental conditions to be derived from spacial events. In “The Tholian…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “How Sharper Than a Serpent’s Tooth”
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” I remember reading an article in the old Trek fanzine published and then re-printed for a paperback compilation in which writer Russell Bates was required to defend himself on charges of stealing the central idea of the second season episode, “Who Mourns…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “The Muse”
“Before I met her, my world was… a much smaller place. I kept to myself, I didn’t need anyone else, and I took pride in that. The truth is, I was ashamed of what I was, afraid that if people saw how truly different I was, they would recoil from me. Lwaxana saw how different…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “The City on the Edge of Forever”
“I am my own beginning. My own ending.” I dreaded writing about “The City on the Edge of Forever” not only because it is considered the greatest single episode of Star Trek, past and present, ever made but also because so much has already been written. Harlan Ellison himself wrote a book on the subject.…
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STAR TREK REWIND: “Homefront,” “Paradise Lost”
“Don’t kid yourself, Ben. This Pandora’s Box of yours…we’re opening it together.” Neither the consequence of patriotism nor nationalism, Starfleet Command wages a war against the citizens of Earth by way of fear-mongering. That’s a word we hear much more often these days. After a terrorist bombing is revealed to be the handiwork of the…
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Under the Eye: “Fairytale”
Bowling for Gilead. So Canada, right? Supposed to be America’s surrogate? Land of the … somewhat free? Home of the … arguably brave? Does your average American citizen have the rights afforded them by their Constitution and Bill of Rights, and are those rights recognized by the Canadian government? The reason I ask is because…
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“Second Union, the Death of Entertainment Journalism, and the Birth of Industry-Friendly Publishing” or “Diogenes at the Castle Walls*”
“We shouldn’t all have to be some grand and mighty incarnation of Diogenes in the pop culture sewer, but with so much money changing hands as well as the promise of fame around every corner, it’s become harder and harder to find an honest person in Media.”
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Under the Eye: “Ballet”
“Atrocities become minor anecdotes or isolated incidents in the cultural sieve, and it becomes easier and easier to forget that yes, even in 2022, a woman lives on borrowed time in backward cultures. She may be the most powerful voting block in the West, but she is valueless in places that are not ‘exceptional.'”
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Under the Eye: “Morning”
“The fifth season of The Handmaid’s Tale begins with the deck stacked against it. Be prepared for more ridiculous soap opera stories, more psychotic Kubrickian gazes into nothingness, and more inappropriate needle drops.”
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Under the Eye: “The Wilderness”
A story like this doesn’t end well. It doesn’t end happily. We don’t finish The Handmaid’s Tale with Luke taking June to a hockey rink to watch a grudge match between two rival teams that ends with cheers and celebration, and then we forget about the previous five years and get back to our lives.…
Misadventures in Blissville 